4th, marathon, and a Ragnar

I hope everyone in the US had a happy and safe 4th of July.  We were kind of aimless this year.  Chris had to work, which is a first, and we had no plan of what to do or where to go.  We used to hang out with our neighbors at their parents' house, but the mother died 3 years ago and that stopped (and the father died last year, how awful!!).  2 years ago we went to Bellingham, which is north of us, but getting out of the parking lot took FOREVER, so I vowed we'd never do that again.  Last year we went to my family's house on Deer Lake in eastern WA and that was fun, but that's a week trip and we didn't like going so early in the summer.  

My sister asked what we were doing on Wednesday night and we decided to go with them to a small logging town not very far from where I live.  They had a loggerrodeo and we thought it'd be fun to watch.  Well, they got stuck in traffic driving up and we missed the whole thing.  We didn't realize it was going to be less than an hour long event.  We wandered around a little, ended up at a park so Maddox could play for awhile and then headed back to my house.  Chris was off work by then and we discussed what to do.  About 7:45 Chris suggested a small park on the river that we thought we could see Mt. Vernon's fireworks from, so we left right away because it's a small park with very little parking.  I was glad we did because there were only a few parking spots left.  We went for a walk and hung out for a couple hours.  It was a pretty busy place, so obviously other people thought of the same thing.  I can't believe we've never done that before.  It is close(ish) to our house, and getting out was easy (much easier than the main parking at the main park).  It was over at 10:40 and I was in bed by 11pm.  I call that a win!

Earlier I was reading about my first half-marathon.  I had pulled it up on my computer the other day because I was reading Kelly's post about her training for her first half marathon and didn't click off it before shutting my laptop. There was a lot of drama surrounding my family and whether or not I was going to run.  I don't remember any of that, so it's funny that it was such a big deal back then.   

I am back in a little bit of drama surrounding the Ragnar I'm doing next weekend.  My team is very lackadaisical about the whole thing and the captain most of all.  My sister is a very big planner and the lack of knowledge surrounding where and when I'll be running has her a bit cross-eyed.  I figure if they're there, they're there and if not, oh well.  I run for me not for her.  Which is the exact opposite feelings I had in the posts I linked above.   😁  But after running 2 marathons with INCREDIBLE support from my family, I can no longer say my family doesn't care . . . well, they don't, but they do recognize the milestones.  😊

So I've officially started marathon training.  Last Sunday I ran 9 miles and my hip has been bothering me since.  I don't know if it's related to the longer distance (9 miles is the furthest I've ran since . . . well, I guess since I quit marathon training last August, which was 15 miles).  I honestly am not sure what causes it to hurt, so I'm keeping track of it on my running log.  I'm writing down when it hurts and what I do about it.  I've never done that before, so maybe by writing it down I can see trends in regards to my running.

I don't think I'm going to do a long run this weekend and possibly not next.  I am supposed to run 10 miles on Sunday, but I don't want to wear myself out before Ragnar.  My first run is 8.3 miles and my second one is 6.6 miles (I think).  I'll be running a total of 18 and a half miles in the span of less than 2 days, so I figure that can count for at least one long run.  Remember when I posted about the other day about the elevation of my first 2 legs?  I said I wasn't concerned about my last leg because it's only 3.1 miles and that can't be too hard . . . Well, I had my first (and only) Ragnar meeting with half (yes, only half showed up) my team.  Two of the people on my team have been Runner 3 (that's me this year) and they both said the last leg was HARD!  They said there's a ridiculous uphill and since it's the third leg, it makes it difficult.  *sigh*